This Means Tammy’s a “No” on Rice, Right?

There’s good oppo, and then there’s good oppo which comes back to bite you in the ass politically.

We’re about to see the latter.

The Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con reports that likely Sec­re­tary of State Des­ig­nate and cur­rent U.S Ambas­sador to the United Nations Susan Rice has sub­stan­tial invest­ments in com­pa­nies that deal with Iran. As we well know from the just com­pleted U.S. Sen­ate race here in Wis­con­sin, our newest junior Sen­a­tor has some (appar­ent) major league issues with those who have invest­ments in com­pa­nies that do busi­ness with Iran.

Rice has the high­est net worth of exec­u­tive branch mem­bers, with a for­tune esti­mated between $24 to $44 mil­lion, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics. A Free Bea­con analy­sis of Rice’s port­fo­lio shows thou­sands of dol­lars invested in at least three sep­a­rate com­pa­nies cited by law­mak­ers on Capi­tol Hill for doing busi­ness in Iran’s oil and gas sector.

The rev­e­la­tion of these invest­ments could pose a prob­lem for Rice if she is tapped by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama to replace Clin­ton. Among the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the next sec­re­tary of state will be a show­down with Iran over its nuclear enrich­ment program.

“That Susan Rice invested in com­pa­nies doing busi­ness in Iran shows either the Obama administration’s lack of seri­ous­ness regard­ing Iran or Rice’s own immoral­ity,” said Michael Rubin, a for­mer Pen­ta­gon adviser on Iran and Iraq. “Either way, her actions under­cut her abil­ity to demand our allies unity on Iran.”

The com­pa­nies in ques­tion appear to have con­ducted busi­ness with Tehran well after West­ern gov­ern­ments began to urge divest­ment from the rogue nation, which has con­tin­ued to enrich ura­nium near lev­els needed to build a nuclear bomb.

Finan­cial dis­clo­sures reveal that Rice has had $50,001-$100,000 in Royal Dutch Shell, a long­time pur­chaser of Iran­ian crude oil.

Hell, the entire for­mer Thomp­son Iran­ian port­fo­lio (just under $50,000) was less than Rice’s Royal Dutch Shell hold­ings alone.

So, of course comes the obvi­ous ques­tion to Bald­win: IF Iran­ian invest­ments were bad when Tommy did it, how is it dif­fer­ent when the poten­tial next Sec­re­tary of State is doing it? And if so, does that mean you will vote against her con­fir­ma­tion if the Pres­i­dent nom­i­nates her?